


'Just Friends'

by taylorswift81



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Season 4 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 20:32:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4719473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylorswift81/pseuds/taylorswift81
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 4 AU, based off of this quote : http://sh-ocking.tumblr.com/post/87785212048/we-looked-at-each-other-a-little-too-long-to-be</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Just Friends'

It started out innocently.

Stiles would look to Derek for confirmation, desperate for someone else to justify his train of thought, to tell him that they trust his judgement and Derek does, easily. Stiles is terrifyingly brilliant, with a shrewd perception of the world that sets him ahead of Scott. Scott wants to see the good in everyone, and he trusts too easily. Stiles is quick to follow his gut, and to earn his trust, it takes time and effort and Derek can still remember how it felt to finally, truly, be trusted by Stiles. He can remember the time that he looked to Stiles, and had seen no trace of wariness, no reservation, just Stiles’ big brown eyes starting back at him, waiting for Derek to say his piece. Stiles relies on Derek’s trust of him, and he relies on the way that Derek seems to know when he needs someone to tell him that he isn’t too wary of the world.

Derek looks to Stiles for guidance. Derek has spent too many years believing that he kills everything he touches, like a poison, determined to wipe out anyone and anything he cares about. Stiles may be younger, but he’s been through more than most. Derek sees himself in Stiles, in the broken boy trying to piece himself back together when no one’s watching, and that makes Stiles the only one who could possibly understand him, and when Derek’s terrified of making mistakes, he looks to Stiles, who catches the panic in his eyes and speaks for Derek, making the decisions he knows Derek can’t bring himself to say.

It starts with surreptitious glances, and blink-and-you-miss-it nods or shakes of the head; a purely silent communication meant for just them. They don’t really know how they started, and they don’t know when it got to the point where they knew each other well enough to have silent conversations, but neither of them really question it. They take the fleeting sense of companionship that it gives them, and they never talk about it.  Stiles finds that Derek, for a while, is the only one who can really look him in the eyes after the Nogitsune incident, and he has no idea how much he needs that until Derek goes to visit Cora for a weekend and finds that, at some point, he’s become so reliant on Derek that is kills him that he isn’t in the room, isn’t even in the state, and he verges on panic attack territory until Derek comes home, and he smells the terror and anxiety coming off of him, cold and metallic, so he puts himself next to Stiles and gently reaches out to brush his fingers against the back of Stiles’ hand.

It escalates to touches, and it isn’t as if Stiles has never touched Derek, because he has, during the times that they’ve saved each other’s lives, or when they’ve needed someone’s touch to ground them into reality, but Stiles becomes reliant on those passing grazes of fingers to the backs of hands, or running gently over pulses in wrists, a brush against the back of their necks. Not a  pack meeting goes by without a single touch, and eventually the touches start to linger, just bordering on too long, but no one thinks to notice because it’s Stiles and Derek, and they’ve always been different than the rest, because Stiles has no sense of personal space for anyone except Derek, and Derek has too much of a sense of personal space for everyone except Stiles and they start to gravitate to each other naturally, two meteors just outside of everyone else’s orbit, so they orbit each other.

Stiles falls out of everyone’s orbit when Derek goes missing, and he throws himself into research, but he stays in Derek’s loft because it smells like him, and it has traces of Derek everywhere, to the point where he can convince himself that Derek is really there. So when he finally has enough evidence to convince the pack to go to Mexico, he finds himself drawn back into their orbit, with a large piece missing from their solar system, and Stiles can’t stop until he finds the person who’s supposed to be by his side, and his hands shake until they find Derek, but it isn’t _his_ Derek, and for too long he wonders if he can ever fix what Kate is done, and get him back, but it’s proven pointless when suddenly Derek is back to himself, but different, and again Stiles wonders if it’s even his Derek, but when they’re driving Derek back to the loft for a pack meeting, so they can catch him up, he wraps his fingers around Stiles’ wrist and he stays like that until they get back to the loft, which smells like an intoxicating mixture of Stiles and Derek mixed together, and there’s a smell of panic, Stiles’ panic, that underlies, and  it occurs to Derek that Stiles was at the loft while Derek was gone, and it does something funny to his stomach that he doesn’t understand.

Derek starts to lose his powers, and he finds that the only thing that can keep his mind off of it is having Stiles around, and that scares him because he can’t bring himself to ask Stiles to be his distraction, he can’t bring himself to be so vulnerable to someone who has just as many problems as he does, but Stiles finds that he has nightmares about his time trapped inside his own body, and when it gets to be too much, when he can’t stand it anymore, he finds himself at Derek’s loft at 3 in the morning, and to his credit, Derek doesn’t questions anything, he just sits Stiles on the couch and turns the TV on, and he gets him a cup of tea because that’s what his mother taught him was polite, and they sit in silence watching something but nothing, both lost in thought, but not overwhelmed, because they aren’t alone.

Stiles starts showing up at the loft unannounced almost every single day, and they rarely talk, but somehow they’re their favorite hours of the day. Stiles gets all of his homework done, and his grades slowly improve, even in the midst of the dead pool and the Berserkers and Kate Argent, and Derek continues to lose his powers, but Stiles helps him research, quietly, with books spread across the only table Derek has in the loft, spare pieces of paper strewn everywhere. Once or twice, Stiles falls asleep at the loft, and Derek texts the Sheriff from Stiles’ phone, and to his credit, the Sheriff never questions a second of it. Derek comes to rely on those hours spent in silence next to Stiles.

Stiles doesn’t take well to Derek’s name being the name to crack the last part of the dead pool code, and he spends that evening with the right side of  his body pressed to the left side of Derek’s while they research, no space in between them, and Derek lets him. There’s been few people that Derek has let in like this, and there’s times where he imagines that it’s Laura on his other side, teasing him about feeling so strongly about the Sheriff’s kid, and is makes his heart hurt in his chest so he presses up against Stiles harder, and Stiles seems to understand because he rests his head against Derek’s shoulder while he reads, with no hesitation.

It evolves further, to the point where Derek constantly has his fingers pressed to the pulse in Stiles’ wrist, or his hand against the small of Stiles’ back, and Stiles can’t be in the same room as Derek and not be pressed against him in some way. Lydia is the first to notice, because they’re good but they’re not that good, and she questions Stiles about it but he just blushes, because he has no explanation, other than the fact that Derek became the only person he could rely on every minute of every day, and he feels guilty because Lydia is his best friend, and she’s there for him as much as she can be, but there’s a disconnect between them since the Nogitsune, because Lydia might find bodies, but he was responsible for bodies, and he can’t get past that. Derek knows that feeling, Derek knows the thoughts that threaten to drown Stiles. They can’t keep their hands off of each other, but it never goes further than it has, always staying on the line between platonic and something more.

They’re pushed over that line when Brunski torments Stiles and Lydia, and Derek doesn’t know why he feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest, or why he feels such a strong tug to leave the fight, and follow that feeling until it disappears, and it does disappear, but its replaced by anger when Lydia calls Scott, explaining everything that they found out, that they’re okay because Parrish got to them, and they all meet up at the loft for a pack meeting and Derek spends the meeting crowded around Stiles, and Stiles leans back against Derek because his hand on his back isn’t enough anymore, he needs to feel Derek all around him, and Derek obliges, when everyone leaves, by resting one hand on the back of Stiles’ neck, and he splays his other hand against Stiles’ lower back, and he kisses Stiles until they’re both out of breath, because the only time he’s felt so horrible is when something had happened to his family, and then he realizes that Stiles is family, because he’s pack, and more than that, Derek realizes that he’s in love with Stiles, because the ADHD gangly teenager turned into a hardened man, with too many thoughts and too many secrets, and Derek hates it, but he needs it, because he needed someone as fucked up as he was and Stiles became that, and part of Derek wishes he hasn’t, but then Stiles has always been better than Derek, and that hasn’t changed, but he understands more of why Derek is the way he is.

Stiles almost laughs when Derek drags his tongue along his neck, and the pulse point in his wrist, because he should’ve realized a long time ago that Derek was scent marking him the whole time, making sure that Stiles always had traces of his scent on him, and it’s a wonder that Scott hasn’t said anything about it, because Stiles’ love life has always been entertaining to Scott, but then Stiles stops thinking about Scott because Derek is right in front of him, and he has his teeth on Stiles’ earlobe, and really Stiles stops thinking about anything because Derek is too talented for his own good.

They spend a full 24 hours in bed, sleeping and talking and not talking for _hours_ and Stiles wonders at how far they’ve come from when Derek threatened to rip Stiles’ throat out, and he wonders why he waited so long, because he knew, probably years ago, that he was stupidly in love with Derek, and if anything, Derek’s already shown that he’s in love with Stiles, and Stiles must be wondering aloud because Derek snorts and pulls Stiles closer to his side, and whispers that he’s an idiot, and of course he’s in love with him, and Stiles flushes before he tucks his head against Derek’s shoulder, and falls asleep in Derek’s arm with the most content feeling he’s had since Allison died.

Stiles’ contentment doesn’t last long, because Kate Argent is the literal _worst_ and he wants to kill her himself, and he has a horrible, worrying feeling that makes him sick to his stomach, because he’s worried for Scott, and he’s worried for Kira, and he wants to take Derek and keep him in the loft, far away from her, but of course Derek doesn’t listen, and they fight until Stiles breaks and knows he’s being selfish, because Derek can’t sit at home while his pack fights Kate.

It ends painfully. Derek’s lying on the ground, choking on his own blood and Stiles is hovering over him, covered in his blood, trying to tamp down the panic that he can feel rushing through his veins. Derek is too calm, and he clamps his hand around Stiles’ wrists and makes him focus, weakly wiping away the tears streaming down Stiles’ face, because he doesn’t want that to be the last thing he sees. Derek whispers that he loves him, and Stiles sobs back that he’s always loved him, and then Stiles kisses Derek, ignoring the metallic taste on his lips, before Derek nods at Braeden, who pulls Stiles up and forces him to focus, forces him to compartmentalize and leave, because Scott’s still in danger, and Stiles can’t pull his eyes off of Derek, who weakly smiles at him, and tells him that it’s going to be okay, that he needs to save Scott.

After that, everything is a blur, and Stiles is on autopilot because he has Derek’s blood covering his fingers, and when Kira asks, he can’t even bring himself to say the words, but she knows, because she can see that Stiles isn’t really with her, isn’t really feeling anything. They save Scott, and he knows too, without asking, because he can _feel_ Stiles’ pain, can smell the misery coming off of him, and he pulls Stiles next to him before they go to find Kate, because this isn’t over but Stiles can’t be left to dwell, and Scott is glad that he’s holding onto Stiles when they get outside and there’s no trace of Derek’s body, and then everything is a whirlwind, because Derek’s alive, and Stiles’ legs go weak, because he was so sure that Derek was dead, and that a part of him had died the minute he did.

Scott holds Stiles back while Derek attacks Kate, and doesn’t let go of him until Kate is gone, and Scott leaves to find Peter, and Stiles rushes Derek, throwing his arms around his neck, and burying his face in Derek’s neck, breathing in the smell of Derek that he’s become so used to, and Derek wraps his arms around Stiles and holds him close, whispering to Stiles that everything’s okay, and that he loves him, and it’s going to take more than Kate Argent to keep them apart.

It never really ends. Stiles doesn’t let Derek leave Beacon Hills, and Derek is there to keep him safe, to keep him from Donovan, to support his belief that Theo is no good for any of them, because that’s what he does. He supports Stiles, he always has, and he does, even when they’re married, living in the rebuilt Hale mansion, with a baby they adopted named Talia, with Cora and Isaac, who both moved back to Beacon Hills, with Scott and Kira five minutes down the road in a cabin they all built together. Stiles and Derek are together until the very end, because they had always looked at each other a little too long to ever be just friends.


End file.
